Conference Agenda

In the landscape of educational attainment, the gender educational gap has been a longstanding subject of academic investigation, examining the disparities in educational achievements between men and women. Traditionally, research has predominantly focused on understanding and addressing women's educational challenges, seeking to promote gender equality in access to education. A rich body of literature looks into cross-national comparisons of gender segregation in European education systems and its consequential impact on occupational gender inequalities. Recent empirical data indicates a narrowing or reversal of the gender gap in educational attainment, with a growing number of females enrolling in upper secondary and tertiary education compared to males. Nevertheless, the persistence of gender educational segregation remains a salient issue as significant disparities persist regarding men's and women's distribution across various academic disciplines and among European nations.

The noteworthy reversal in the educational gap observed in tertiary education over recent decades has exerted a profound influence on reproductive behaviour, as well as patterns of assortative mating and union formation. International literature underscores a strong correlation between fathers' and mothers' social characteristics and outcomes encompassing education, social class, and income. Individuals, it appears, exhibit a proclivity to select partners with shared socio-economic attributes.

In this context, a homogamous union signifies an equal educational level within the union. Hypergamous unions are characterized by the highest educational level, either for the respondent's mother compared to the father or the respondent compared to their partner. Conversely, hypogamous unions denote the lowest educational level, either for the respondent's mother compared to the father or the respondent compared to their partner.

The analysis will be based on the highest level of completed education for respondents, respondents' partners, and parents, and a three-level latent variable will be formulated to assess homogamy or heterogamy in the educational level for the following countries that consistently participated in the 1 to 10 ESS rounds: Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Multilevel multinomial logistic regression analysis will also be conducted, to reveal factors that influence the educational level of respondents based on their gender. The main motivation of this study is to explore assortative mating patterns concerning the gender educational gap in European countries, examining individuals surveyed in the ESS and their partners, as well as their parental unions. This involves predicting the proportions of female and male respondents at a given educational level, considering specific social and demographic characteristics at the country level. The initial results affirm the presence of the reverse gender educational gap phenomenon for the parental union, as in most of the countries and rounds under investigation, it is observed that both male and female respondents are more likely to have a homogamous type of educational level in their mother-father union.

Ample research has shown that children from higher-educated parents attain higher education than children from lower-educated parents. Research has also demonstrated cross-context variation in the effect of parental education and parental educational combinations on children’s educational attainment. Yet, studies have not described and explained cross-context variation in the effect of having two highly educated parents on children’s educational attainment despite the substantial increase of this type of parents in modern Western populations. In this paper, we aim to describe and explain this variation. We hypothesize that in contexts where parental educational homogamy is less common, educational systems are more stratified, and female participation rates are higher, the effect of belonging to highly educated parents on children’s educational attainment is stronger. This may be explained by the selectivity of educational homogamy and the possibilities for parents to pool resources and enhance their children’s educational careers. Preliminary analyses of the European Social Survey show cross-country variation in parental homogamy effects on children’s advancement to tertiary education. In further analyses, we plan to extend this by focusing on the effect of highly educated parents on general educational attainment. We also study effects for boys and girls separately and investigate country and regional variation within the ESS.

Rising economic inequality in Western societies has spurred an extensive body of research on its social and political consequences (Wilkinson and Picket, 2009). With political alienation and populism rising in parallel, many scholars have investigated the consequences of macro-economic inequality on civic participation (Schröder and Neumayr, 2021) as citizen’s voluntary activities are said to form the basis of a democratic society and social cohesion (Putnam, 2001; Schlozman and Verba, 1979; Solt, 2008).

So far, empirical evidence documents a clear depressing effect of rising inequality on civic participation (Lancee and van der Werfhorst, 2012): The more unequal a society, the less people participate. However, a growing strand of literature pointed to the greater importance of the local economic contexts for individual participation behaviour (Lim and Sander, 2013; Bonomi Bezzo and Jeannet 2023). Yet, the evidence of regional inequality’s effect on civic participation is inconclusive, with some studies finding a depressing effect (Lim and Sander 2013) and others documenting a boosting effect (van Holm 2018). We argue that this puzzle can be solved by accounting for the intertwined dynamics of economic inequality at the regional and the national level that people are experiencing simultaneously in their everyday lives. From a conflict perspective, we could expect individuals living in unequal contexts that are embedded in an equal national context to become more aware of economic disparities, mobilizing (especially less resource-rich) people to become more engaged. Drawing on the relative deprivation theory, we could instead also expect those individuals to feel disillusioned and powerless to engage less in civic activities. Therefore, we aim to shed light on the interplay of national and regional contexts in shaping individuals’ civic participation.

To investigate how the interplay of the different layers of inequality plays out for individuals’ civic participation comparatively, we rely on a novel regional inequality dataset covering NUTS 2-regional information of up to 21 countries between 2002 and 2021, that we complement with country-level information of inequality provided by the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (Solt, 2016) and economic prosperity from the World Bank. We combine this macro-level dataset with individual-level survey data from the European Social Survey (waves 1-10). Using multilevel random effects within and between models, we are not only able to analyse how the different layers of inequality and their interplay affect civic participation cross-sectionally, but also to provide longitudinal evidence on how changes in inequality affect individuals’ civic participation by exploiting within-region and within-country inequality dynamics over time.

The aim of this paper is to examine the patterns of social mobility in Europe. In the first half of the social mobility patterns of 20th century Europe will be depicted through existing mobility research. While in the second half various waves of the European Social Survey will be utilised to examine social mobility in Europe. While evaluating the data from European Social Survey the mobility patterns of minority groups are taken into special consideration in particular those belonging to the minority religious denomination and the ethnic minorities. Not only will this paper depict the changes and the current social mobility landscape of Europe. It will also answer the following research questions: Is there a difference in the social mobility of the majority population and the minority groups in Europe across the board or are their unique spatial patterns? In what way do these mobility patterns differ? Has there been any significant changes in the mobility patterns of minority groups since the first wave of the European Social Survey? Were there any temporal patterns in social mobility from the 20th century to today?